Have you ever heard a part of a song you really like then when you search for it you discover you already listened to it and just didnt saw the potential in it
I'm not sure is i should be happy that my music taste is like that or disappointed i couldnt pin that the lirycs were a banger the first time
moon, a hole of light, through the big top tent up high, here before and after me, shinin' down on me. moon, tell me if I could send up my heart to you? so, when I die, which I must do, could it shine down here with you?
Oh, Moon. Moon, Moon, Moon. I made the point earlier that this is a character who would really have benefited from having access to Aesop’s Fables as a child, because the story of ‘The Farmer and the Viper’ would potentially have been of great interest to her. She could also have benefited from watching Gargoyles as a child, if only to hear David Xanatos say “Revenge is a sucker’s game.”
Like, Moon. Moon. You’re mad because Eclipsa wouldn’t let you kill her child right in front of her, and that when she intervened to keep you from killing her child right in front of her, you were badly injured and wound up in the Realm of Magic for a while, without your memories, and was temporarily separated from your family? Moon. Moon. That wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t jumped the gun when Eclipsa was succeeding in talking Meteora down and decided that murder was your only option. And it’s just a bit hypocritical of you to be mad at Eclipsa for defending her daughter against you, when you’ve proven you’re more than willing to kill on your own child’s behalf. (Also, you’re mad because you were separated from your family for a few weeks? By your own standards, Eclipsa has every right to just go on the rampage, because she was separated from her family for three hundred years.)
So, Moon. You get mad that Eclipsa wouldn’t let you kill her kid and that you were hurt and temporarily separated from your family, so you decide to orchestrate a coup and depose her so you can win back your old throne and kick her out of the dimension. But in so doing, you decide to join forces with a genocidal racist with superpowers, and empower other violent racists with the same superpowers Mina has, all of whom are people who have made it clear time and again that they’d like to do harm to Eclipsa and to the monsters of Mewni, which, though very little can be said for you at this point, it can at least be said that that was not part of your plan. You knew what Mina was. You knew what the other people you turned into Solarian warriors were. And you just thought you’d be able to rein them all in and keep them from turning this coup into a genocide, because of course they’d all respect your authority and ignore both their own hatred and the power you gave them to do something with that hatred.
Oh, and you completely betrayed your daughter’s trust, singlehandedly erased all of the work your daughter poured her blood, sweat, and tears into, set up a situation where most of her friends will die if you, Star, and Eclipsa don’t come up with a solution, created an army of super-powered, nigh-invulnerable genocidal warriors who are off to gleefully commit genocide, have been driven out of your home dimension on pains of death, and your daughter is absolutely furious with you and will likely never trust you again.
So yeah, you fucked up. With age does not necessarily come wisdom, and no matter how much we ought to know better, we’re all still capable of making monumentally stupid decisions.
But I don’t think you’re beyond redemption. Not by a long shot.
Okay, we’re below the cut, so I’m exiting Direct Address mode and going into Essay POV mode.
First of all, though I was, like many people, surprised by the revelation that Moon… Did That, I don’t think it came out of nowhere. She’s spent most of this season surrounded by people who hate Eclipsa and hate monsters. She’s spent months living in an echo chamber of hate that, coincidentally, happens to validate all of her old beliefs. It was almost inevitable that something bad was going to come of that. (And don’t think I didn’t notice that at least some of the Neo-Solarians were members of Moon’s yurt village.)
Also, Moon has been visually linked with Solaria since Season Two. Ever since ‘Into the Wand’, where we first saw her tapestry, in fact. Theirs are the only two royal tapestries that depict violence, and both depict violence against monsters. Also, Moon’s battle garb? Is pretty clearly designed after Solaria’s battle garb. Her dress is almost literally a palette swap of Solaria’s, and as an adult, she wears her hair braided into battle, just like Solaria. It was probably intentional on her part, meant to hearken back to this “heroic” queen of old as she, too, carried out a campaign of extermination against monsters as a grieving teenager.
And I’ve always found it kind of iffy that Moon’s battle garb is literally her cosplaying the genocidal warmonger in the family tree (I wonder what Eclipsa thought when she first saw Moon wearing that dress as a teenager). Something’s finally come of that, I guess.
Second, Moon’s main fault here was not a fault of malice. It was, first, of arrogance, and considering that Moon has spent the better part of her life ruling as an absolute monarch who is extremely unaccustomed to anyone challenging her authority, arrogance is entirely too plausible as a character flaw for her. It was, secondly, one of short-sightedness, and, well, I guess Star comes by it honestly. As arrogant and short-sighted as she would have to have been to seriously believe that she could control Mina and the other Solarian warriors, as serious a lapse of judgment as it was to think that she could just open this Pandora’s box of bigotry and hatred and then close it again with no problems, it was at least clear that Moon wanted her coup to be as bloodless as possible. She didn’t want to hurt Eclipsa; she just wanted Eclipsa gone.
I think part of Moon’s saving grace here is that her coup, once she revealed her role in it, immediately and violently blew up in her face.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. Even if everything had gone to plan, it still would have blown up in her face. Because a throne you win by violently deposing your predecessor is a throne you spend the rest of your life fighting just to hold onto. Because resurrecting the Solarian warriors is just the thing to ignite the powder keg of Mewman-Monster relations, and just might be the thing to reignite the Mewman-Monster war. Because if Moon thought the other kingdoms gave her flack for her handling of Toffee, oh, can you just imagine the fresh hell she’d be in for on the diplomacy front after Rich Pigeon, Ponyhead, and (less directly) Penelope Spiderbite got caught in the crossfire of her coup? Because if Moon’s coup had gone completely to plan, I honestly think it would have been the end, the very end, of her relationship with Star. It would have destroyed any bond of love and trust the two of them shared, and Star probably would never have wanted anything to do with Moon again.
And don’t get me wrong, things are bad right now. Because on top of everything else, River? River doesn’t know what she did. He can’t possibly know what she did; there’s no way he would have been able to keep it a secret. And if the Solarian warriors find out he helped (or tried to help, if Globgor doesn’t make it to the Magic Sanctuary in time) Globgor? They’ll kill him. Or try to, at least. After all, Mina told her warriors to round up all “monster smoochers” (I see they’re being as clear in their references to real life attitudes towards miscegenation as possible) along with the monsters; one wonders how long it’s going to be before it’s made clear that Penelope Spiderbite’s on that cliff, too. But they could be worse. Moon should honestly be grateful that her coup didn’t go to plan, because she would have paid dearly for it, and I don’t think the love of her daughter is a price Moon would have been able to bear paying. Even to get back at Eclipsa.
She’s still going to pay dearly, though. Moon wrote a check she couldn’t cash, and if the promos for ‘Cleaved’ are any indication, we’re about to watch the price get taken out of her hide. Her one route to redemption is the fact that, since her coup blew up in her face, she can actually do something to make up for what she did, and start down the road to regaining Star’s trust. But it’s not going to be easy, it’s not going to be pleasant, and ‘Cleaved’ is almost certainly not going to be a fun outing for her.
The other part of Moon’s saving grace is that upon being removed from Mewni, she seems to have asked herself almost immediately, “Was it all worth it?”
And answered her question with a resounding, “No, it really, really wasn’t.”
Because she can’t find a single thing to say to Star when Star calls her out. Because she is just so obviously guilt-stricken and confused by Eclipsa treating her much more charitably than she really deserves. And I really don’t think her actions were truly rooted in malice, because whenever Moon is actually around Eclipsa, away from the echo chamber of hate that she was living in these past several months, she seems at a loss to remember what exactly it was about Eclipsa that she hated so much in the first place, what it was about her that made her feel as if she was justified in ruining the life of a woman whose life has been ruined so many times that she can just compartmentalize it and make nice with the person responsible as if Moon did nothing more serious than swipe the last Snookers bar from the vending machine, instead of nearly getting Eclipsa and Eclipsa’s beloved baby daughter killed, and putting the life of Eclipsa’s beloved husband in serious jeopardy and being more than willing to use that as leverage against Eclipsa to make her surrender. Oh, and resurrecting the Solarian program probably unearthed just a heap of unpleasant memories for Eclipsa, considering who her mother was, but oh, look, Eclipsa’s happy to play pool with, strategize with, and give advice on reconciling with her daughter to Moon. The closest she comes to actually calling Moon out for anything is getting a tiny bit passive-aggressive with Moon over her working with Rhombulus to frame Eclipsa for Globgor’s release. Which must make Moon feel even worse, because if their situations were reversed, Moon would not be nearly as civil. For starter’s.
Yeah, Moon fucked up. She fucked up monumentally. But she at least understands that she fucked up, and that is a start.
Moon: Everything's coming together for me to make the medicine I need to cure the Pokemon I accidentally sent to the ICU!
Me: No my dear child, everything's coming together for you to go up against an alien jellyfish/woman fusion (and probably help out her emotionally abused kids along the way).
